1:72 Polish 'lisovchiki' first half of the 17th century

Riders without armor who lived off plunder

The light cavalry raised in the first decades of the seventeenth century by Aleksander Lisowski was paid by nobody on a regular basis. It lived on what it took along the way, and its reputation traveled Europe faster than it did itself. In 1619 it intervened in the fighting in Hungary, and its name then appears in the chronicles of Moravia and Silesia, usually in very sharp sentences.

The most conspicuous thing about the equipment is what is missing. No cuirass, no helmet, no shield. The figures have a fur coat or a longer outer coat, under it a tunic drawn in with a belt, and a low sheepskin cap on the head. The saddle is light and the stirrups short. Such an outfit reduced the weight the horse carried, and that was the whole point of the detachment: to cover in a day a distance for which an armored company needed two.

The weapons match a raid, not a battle line: a short lance with a pennon, a saber at the left hip, a recurve bow stowed in a case together with the quiver, and later also a pair of pistols behind the belt and a short firearm. Many of the men carried plundered pieces of Turkish and Tatar origin, so the detachment never looked uniform, and bags for loot belonged to the equipment as well.

The set captures the riders in the form they had in the time of the Thirty Years' War, when the imperial side hired them against the Protestant armies. The castings at a reduction of 1:72 suit a scene of a raid on a baggage train as well as a camp where plundered goods are being divided up. The stances are designed so that a deployed skirmish line can be built as well as a group halted on the spot, which looks more natural with light cavalry than a closed rank.